Canada’s cities need a venture capital revolution

November 17, 2015

Competitiveness and Prosperity

Richard Florida and Karen M. King

With the new Trudeau government committed to bolstering Canadian productivity and innovation, it must deal with the fact that Canada continues to lag far behind the United States and other leading nations in startups and venture capital.

Over the past few years, $2 billion in venture capital has been invested in Canadian startups annually. That’s just 6 per cent of the U.S. total, and less than a third of the venture capital invested in the San Francisco Bay Area alone. Canada ranks fifth in the world in global venture capital, behind not just the U.S., but the United Kingdom and the emerging nations of China and India, according to our newly released study “Startup City Canada.”